First, a PSA: I have shingles, and I look like a boxer who lost a match—my face is puffy, red, and itchy, especially around my right eye and forehead. Painful blisters are dotted across my scalp, making it difficult to sleep. Right now I’m also sticky; honey is supposed to help soothe and heal shingles, so I’m wearing a layer of honey all over the right side of my face.
I’m reporting this unappealing news to remind you not to be like me. Go get your shingles vaccine if you’re over 50. I foolishly put off the vaccine, assuming I didn’t need to worry about getting shingles at this age, that it was nothing like Covid. Well, shingles is not like Covid, but it’s like an itchy, painful flu that can last for weeks. End of PSA.
Last month, I drove to Salem, MA, to join some writer friends at the Writer Unboxed conference. Studying fiction writing with other writers in witchy, historical Salem felt like a mystical combination.
As I’ve thought about the conference in the weeks since, it struck me that a few of the takeaways apply to not just to writing, but to life, and maybe midlife in particular. Here they are:
Unconventionality is a strength.
Novelist Therese Anne Fowler spoke about how long it took for her to recognize her own unconventionality as a strength. As an older MFA student, a thirty-something divorced mom, she felt out of step with her twenty-something classmates, and disdained and condescended to by professors. Still, she eventually wrote and sold two contemporary novels. Even though that second novel sold poorly, her agent urged her to write a third, similar novel, to stick with her genre and her so-called author brand. She stuck with the plan and wrote that third contemporary novel, and as she feared, it didn’t do well.
And that was when she abandoned conventional advice, and wrote (without any guarantee that it would sell) the historical novel that she’d been wanting to write. “At the time, I didn’t know whether I was saving my career or killing it. What I did know was that I’d recovered my joy in the act of creating, and because of that, I regained my optimism that somehow it would work out for the better,” she noted. This historical novel was Z: A Novel of Zelda Fitzgerald, which became her first bestseller. Since then, Fowler has written both historical and contemporary novels. But as with so many other authors, her path has been far from smooth, including points where she wondered whether to keep writing. But she did keep writing. As she wrote in a piece on failure for Writer Unboxed:
“With writing (and especially with fiction) there are so many obstacles, so many hurdles, such a long road to traverse to have even a modicum of success, that it can feel like there’s no point in even trying. But as it happens, whatever we ultimately accomplish with our writing lies largely in what we do—or don’t do—when we can’t get what we want.”
Chaos is breaking over us, and we can make use of it.
In another session, novelist Therese Walsh noted that our world seems particularly chaotic right now, which can interfere with writing and focus. But as writers, we can also use chaos in a bunch of ways, both in drafting and revising. “Chaos does not mean total disorder,” she said. “Chaos means a multiplicity of possibilities. From the Greek, ‘the thing birthed from the void.’” When you’re drafting a story, adding some chaos (a chaotic character who will say or do anything, or some natural chaotic force) can push a character out of a rut. And when you’re revising, an act of chaos, breaking your story, can ultimately inspire order: “When chaos breaks our work apart, we see the fragments of what we once had, and can see opportunities to rebuild..when a story isn’t working, you can break it and rebuild it.”
Therese referred to a quote from Francis Ford Coppola, and I’ve been pondering it since then: “Anything you build on a large scale or with intense passion invites chaos.” He was almost certainly talking about making a movie, but I think you can apply the quote to a big writing project.
“When chaos breaks our work apart, we see the fragments of what we once had, and can see opportunities to rebuild..when a story isn’t working, you can break it and rebuild it.”
We all get stuck. Getting stuck is part of the process.
Historical novelist Heather Webb led a session on reinventing the writer’s toolbox, noting that even for longtime authors, every single book is its own entity, and the process that worked for writing the last novel may not work this time around, and you may get stuck and feel blocked. Mixing up your tools can help get you unstuck to summon the story; these can be simple changes like writing longhand instead of typing into a Word document, or adding or changing pre-writing rituals—a playlist, a candle, a snippet of a poem, or a piece of jewelry you put on.
Rejection, which can also stop a writer, is built into every writer’s life, and not just for unpublished writers who feel bruised by the querying process, but for published authors too, in the sales that didn’t happen, the reviews the book didn’t get, the book festival that said no. Finding community, other writers to check in with, can normalize those feelings.
I’d add that refilling the creative well, through reading, a museum visit, a long walk with a friend—whatever refills your well—can give fresh energy and new directions for a manuscript.
And to take these takeaways beyond writing: When we get to midlife, those qualities that we might once have seen as weaknesses, like unconventionality and not fitting in, dealing with repeated episodes of chaos, or finding ourselves creatively stuck, may well turn out to be strengths, making us braver, and leading to new work and maybe even new understandings of ourselves.
(For more on why writer’s block is normal and may even be good for your writing, listen to this episode of Becca Syme’s Quitcast podcast.)
Holiday hate-watching: Love Actually
Every year around this time, I rewatch Love Actually, and am reminded what a ridiculous movie it is, despite the incredible cast. So every year around this time, I also turn to Lindy West, and revisit her classic takedown of Love Actually. It is very funny.
A more recent piece, 55 Thoughts I Had While Rewatching Love Actually, from Emma Specter, is almost as funny.
And last, this little Instagram gem. (Thanks, Bonnie!)
Do you love Love Actually? Hate it? Or some of each? Let me know in the comments!
Under-the-radar holiday movie: Feast of the Seven Fishes
Did you catch Feast of the Seven Fishes when it came out in 2019? Neither did I, but it’s currently streaming on Netflix. Like Love Actually, Feast of the Seven Fishes has a big cast, but it’s a small movie about an Italian family in western Pennsylvania coal country, Christmas 1983. At the heart of the movie is Tony, a young man with big dreams who meets Beth, who’s from the WASPy, upper-crusty side of the tracks. Feast is a family dramedy and a coming-of-age story, told vignette style. Sweet and funny, great period details, and lots of Italian dishes! 🎄🎄🎄
The Father Christmas Letters
I’ll leave you with some images from one of my favorite Christmas books from my own youth, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Father Christmas Letters. I was never much of a Tolkien fan, but these letters Tolkien wrote and illustrated for his kids every Christmas for many years, in the voice of Father Christmas, are charming and funny. This book deserves its own post, so more on this later! 🎄
This was so enjoyable to read, Sarah. Thanks! I loved hearing about the Salem writer's conference, so many good tips to share with us writers! Appreciated how getting unstuck in writing is also about getting unstuck in midlife. My midlife character in my work in progress is getting unstuck--at least I am trying to help her do that, when I am not throwing rocks at her, which we wicked writers must do. Sarah, I am so enjoying reading The Wrong Kind of Woman. It's among the final reads in my 50 books I read in 2023...nearly last but hardly least. I am rooting for Virginia and Rebecca, Sam and the Gang of Four! Also, so sorry you have shingles. I got my vaccine!
So sorry about the Shingles, Sarah. I'm definitely getting the vaccine at my next doc appointment in January. I read an interesting Covid article that, in a round about way and as an example of how viral immunity works, explained the surge in Shingles cases in our generation. Basically, the chicken pox vaccine reduced the amount of low grade chicken pox exposures we get throughout our lives to keep up our immunity that we got from being infected as kids. Fascinating. Doesn't help you now, though. Hope the honey does!
I must admit to loving Love Actually. I adore Emma Thompson, Laura Linney and Colin Firth. I adore British humor, even the offensive bits that make Americans blush. I get what your referenced critique authors are saying but the movie was made 20 years ago. A LOT has changed in society since then, most of it not for the better (hello Twitter!). I watch it to get lost in the fun of the season and the ridiculous characters and to listen to Hugh Grant's perfect RP again, not to over analyze societal implications. If I did that, I could never watch another classic Fred Astaire or Bing Crosby Christmas movie. I like that it's silly and messy and not at all like 99% of the Hallmark-esque drivel available these days.
Hope you recover soon!